Death of dualism? - Page 2
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 1: Insecurity in the New World Order
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Allan Gyngell
Far more than in the US, Australia's Westminster-based bureaucratic policy machine operates with a deep collegiality. In research for a book on how Australian foreign policy is made, Michael Wesley and I surveyed Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) policy officers. Nearly 90 per cent of them described their professional contacts with officers in other departments and agencies as invariably or mostly collegial. The fights about resources and influence certainly take place but the policy disputes, where they exist at all, are far more muted. DFAT, Defence, ONA, the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation and Immigration are all headed by former Foreign Affairs officers – each of them exceptionally able but none bringing the clearly different take on the global scene that was seen, for example, from senior members of the US State and Defence departments over the use of United Nations forums in the lead-up to the Iraq war.
DFAT is a tightly disciplined organisation these days. Unauthorised comment is discouraged. No separate policy-planning function exists inside the department to question current policy doctrine, while traditional political reporting from overseas posts has been pared back by staffing cuts and a shift of focus (for the most part sensible) to advocacy work.
ONA provides some alternative analysis but not alternative policy advice. The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet has its international areas, which are often staffed by seconded officers who hope to return eventually to home departments, and the department now focuses on policy implementation. Defence has an important influence on external policy but generally avoids policy debates on DFAT's central turf.
In any case, for 20 years or so, the Australian bureaucracy has been steadily losing power to the executive. Within the executive, the influence of the Prime Minister has been growing at the expense of his ministers. No Australian prime minister has rivalled John Howard for power in the area of external policy. This is partly for reasons of internal politics. The Prime Minister's electoral success has given him enormous authority: on no major foreign policy issue during the Howard years has there been any obvious political debate within the Coalition. Structural changes to the machinery of government after 1996 (such as the creation of the National Security Committee of Cabinet and the broadening of prime ministerial involvement in ambassadorial appointments) further strengthened the Prime Minister's position.
THE EXPANSION OF THE PRIME MINISTER'S ROLE in foreign policy also reflects broader trends – the impact of America's assertion of its unprecedented power after September 11 and the extent to which, in a globalising world, the gap between domestic and international issues is getting harder to draw.
A curious sort of reversal has taken place in the declaratory language of Australian foreign policy. The Howard Government came to office accusing its predecessor of being "obsessed" with Asia. (As an adviser to that government, I might plead guilty to preoccupation, not obsession.) The Howard Government promised a more interests-oriented foreign policy, in implicit contrast to Labor's values-infused goals of engagement with Asia. Keating, for example, spoke of a vision of Australian foreign policy in which "our national culture is shaped by and helps to shape the cultures around us", while, for former foreign affairs minister Gareth Evans, "all Australians ... must understand that we are not only in this region but of it".
In contrast, the Howard Government declared in its first foreign policy White Paper, In the National Interest: "Preparing for the future is not a matter of grand constructs. It is about the hard-headed pursuit of the interests which lie at the core of foreign and trade policy ..."
Yet apart from a declared preference for bilateral over multilateral relationships, the content of that White Paper was in broad line with the consensus position of its predecessors. "The continuing economic rise of east Asia" was singled out, with globalisation, as one of the "two most profound influences on Australian foreign and trade policy over the next 15 years". But In the National Interest was released in August 1997, just before the full force of the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis came crashing down on the economies of Indonesia and the rest of South-East Asia, leading to Suharto's fall, the political uncertainty which followed and East Timor's brutal transition to independence.
By the time of the second White Paper, Advancing the National Interest, in 2003, the world had changed and, with it, the language of Australian foreign policy. Although the word "interest" was in its title, the language used was overtly about values. The document seems a far more authentic and confidently argued account of the Howard Government's international views.
The analyses of Australia's relations with the US on the one hand and Asia on the other are revealingly different. While Australia has "close ties and affinities" with North America and Europe, it has simply a "history of active engagement" with Asia. The "vital" relationship with the US – the only country about which that telling word is used – is underpinned by the fact that Australia and the US "share values and ideals".
This point was made directly by John Howard in his press conference with George W. Bush at the President's Texas ranch in May 2003: "Australia and America are close friends because above all we have similar values. In the end, the thing that binds nations together more than anything else is the commonality of their values and we have a view of the world that puts freedom and individual liberty, a belief in market outcomes where appropriate, at the centre of the activities of both our nations."
In comparison, the references to Asia in the White Paper are pared down and practical. They are couched in the careful, businesslike language of reciprocity: "The Government's commitment to Australia's relationships in Asia proceeds on the basis of mutual respect. It focuses on the common interest between Australia and the countries of Asia while acknowledging our differences ... [The Government] will focus on those relationships and issues that matter most to Australia's interests."
The emphasis is on mutuality and on practical outcomes – what Foreign Affairs Minister Downer has referred to as "practical regionalism". The references have, too, an instructional tone about them: "Regional governments have made significant progress in remedying shortcomings ... but more needs to be achieved ... It is important that the Indonesian Government use the opportunity ... to press ahead with domestic economic reform."
THIS CONTRASTS NOT ONLY WITH THE RHETORIC OF the preceding Labor government but also with some of the earlier language of Howard Government ministers, like Tim Fischer. The emotional burden of the language of Australian foreign policy, and its underlying dynamic, has shifted sides more substantially than is acknowledged in the public debate. Values are back again but with a different focus.
At the core of the Howard Government's foreign policy from the beginning was an insistence that Australia did not have to choose between its geography (read Asia) and its history (read Europe and North America). This conviction is now being articulated, at least privately, in a slightly different way. After September 11, 2001, it is argued, the world itself changed in ways so significant that such choices are not just unnecessary for Australia but, in a very real way, no longer relevant.
Fifteen years after that Sovietologists' conference in Honolulu, the international landscape is unimaginably different. It may well be time to abandon the legacy of Asia-Great Power dualism in Australia's foreign-policy thinking. But these are large issues with serious consequences and the limited scale and allusive tone of much of the debate so far is not reassuring.
It seems to me, for example, that any new approach for Australian foreign policy needs to contain more than just a shrugging acknowledgement that we find ourselves in a one-horse global race. It needs to be more comprehensive, more active and much more specific than any currently on offer. However we redefine the issue, we arrive back at much the same point: we must still find ways of addressing with new energy and a fresh voice the areas where the immediate tasks of, and opportunities for, Australian diplomacy lie – in the fragile, complex region around us. ♦